October 24th, 2008 |
9:14 PM

1 - We bought rocks yesterday, two of them column like for water features. Some small boulders. As much weight as the four-runner could carry. $400. Yikes.

2. We bought rocks today. Medium cobbles and large cobbles and pebbles and drain rock. And mulch. And flagstone stepping stones for next to the driveway. Only for the front yard. Another $700. To be delivered between 7am and 9am tomorrow. Wanna guess who isn't going to be sleeping in tomorrow?

3. I am pretty sure the flagstone is too orange. Hubby things it works with the charcoal and brown driveway pavers but I'm not so sure. Either way it is what we have for now because I don't think they are returnable. That would be $130 of the $700 in #2. I anticipate replacing them down the road.

4. There is a fair probability that there are too many medium cobbles for main part of the creek bed. I followed the guidelines and asked the guys at the rockyard but I seem to have a habit of ordering way too much rock. And there is a fair probability that the bottom half of the creek bed has not been tapered enough at the top (hubby and I disagree about this) and we won't find out until we start working tomorrow and I have to ask him to do the pick axe thing some more. Sigh. We'll see. I'm guess the creekbed will not be done tomorrow. Maybe Sunday. I'm not much good moving rock with my bum arm. Mulch I can do so while hubby is doing the creek I'll be sheet mulching and then adding the regular mulch.

5. The water features both need pumps. Solar pumps. Good ones. I'd prefer to run a battery too so they could run longer but I don't know. $500 for one pump and solar panel and solar safe for battery back-up. Sigh. $1000 for the water features. Ouch.

Who am I?I was born on the Cancer/Leo cusp and share a birthday with Ernest Hemingway and Robin Williams. The similarities don't stop there as I can go from depressed to ecstatic without ever passing go. I feel scared most of the time though my friends call me brave and I find it easier to believe in my friends than to believe in my own abilities to make what I want out of my life.

Who am I? A wife, a mother, a daughter, and even, gulp, a grandmother.

Who am I? A writer who never gets tired of playing with words, even when the words are hard to find. A writer of books for children and articles for grown-ups and many things in-between.

"Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing. They are the ones who discover what is most important and strangest and most pleasurable in themselves, and keep believing in the value of their work, despite the difficulties."
--Bonnie Friedman

"As writers, we must be willing to feel our sadness, our anger, our terror, so we can reach in and find our sweet vulnerability that is just sitting there waiting for us to come back home."
--Nancy Slonim Aronie

"Writers write about what obsesses them. You draw those cards. I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I'm writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is."
--Anne Rice